Fluke advice

Here is the strap solution I use for my tenor Fluke:



It's a leather chord I took off an old purse, and attached via a thin leather strip to the headstock. As you can also see in the image, my standard tuner fits onto the headstock.

I have the hardwood fretboard because I wanted the option to string with a wound Low G string. As far as I can tell, intonation is great on my Fluke.

I did get a case for it from The Magic Fluke Company, and I like to have it to transport to and from uke group sessions. It's semi-hard, and very thick. Between the upgrade for the tenor neck and hardwood fretboard, the upgrade for the passive pickup, and the case, it's a bit pricey.

I have the standard tuners, and I keep a small screwdriver to tighten up the screws in the infrequent times they slip.

kissing said:

This applies to every pickup. I have tinkered with several pickups, and found the B-band is a bit hard to work with.

Im sure the Flea company would have set their's up correctly to sound good. I have no doubt that their Solid-Body electric has a great balanced output. But I dont think it's a highly versatile pickup for general applications.

At least compared to other pickups.

Its not a case of "the saddle needs to be right".. its a case of B-band pickups being more finicky about installation conditions than others. Why would they have such a specific Q&A dismissing the issue as incorrect installation? Probably because there have been a considerable number of complaints that they needed to address it. Many inexpensive, mass produced ukes that come with the B-band probably sound unbalanced.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification, kissing. Yeah I'm not really too worried about the SB Fluke being setup right. I just don't have any experience working with these internal electronics by themselves and would rather not have to tinker with them if things break down, which is why I went with the Fluke.

So I finally had time to look through the very useful answers.

From the info you provided, I figured that I better get the geared tuners and might as well get the gigbag in stead of the hardcase. And if I get a pickup just in case Ill need it someday, I won't need the B-Band one. I never tried friction tuners, but I have a feeling that I will not be a friction-tuner guy.

If I should get the plastic fretboard I think I would want it with the black fluke, but the Koa with the hardwood fretboard is even more tempting.

Now after investigating the shipping and customs, I realize that this uke would get a whole lot more expensive that I anticipated.
The Koa (with pickup and gigbag) would be $ 843 shipped to Denmark, rather than the $ 354 starting price. ($ 89 need to have upgrades, $114 nice to have upgrade, $80 shipping, the rest customs)
And the black Lava without any pickup or case would be $ 568 rather than the $ 254 starting price.

I am not sure I am ready for a uke at that price, when I only play Makala MK C at this point, and I am not even sure the tenor size will suit me.

The European vendors I can find online only sell the standard model with friction tuners. However, looking at the prices I see that buying these in Europe is probably 10-15% cheaper that importing from overseas myself.
Could it be an advantage to ask a european vendor to import a specific fluke for me?
Someone has experience with that?
Logically it should be more expensive because they need at cut, but perhaps some custom-fees and double-VAT issues will be lower when a store handles it.

UkingViking said:

The European vendors I can find online only sell the standard model with friction tuners. However, looking at the prices I see that buying these in Europe is probably 10-15% cheaper that importing from overseas myself.
Could it be an advantage to ask a european vendor to import a specific fluke for me?
Someone has experience with that?
Logically it should be more expensive because they need at cut, but perhaps some custom-fees and double-VAT issues will be lower when a store handles it.

Click to expand...

They probably get better prices than you do. I'd tell them exactly what you want and how much it will cost you to get it in. They'll probably tell you whether it would be worth it for you to have them order it for you or not.

I went through all the process you went through and came to the conclusion that the extra cost and hassle of importing from the USA simply wasn't worth it and went with a standard Fluke that was available here and I've no regrets. Most of my ukuleles have friction tuners so the friction tuners weren't an issue for me. They do take a bit of getting used to if you've had geared tuners in the past. You have to make sure they are properly adjusted with the tension screw sufficiently tight to prevent them slipping but not too tight. You have to get used to make tiny adjustments with them but that just takes practice.

If you find you really don't like the friction tuners, you can buy a set of normal style gear tuners for not much more than a set of regular friction tuners and find someone to fit them for you. After all the Flea/Fluke headstock is really only a modified slotted headstock.

good move, if you bought all the hardwood fretboard and case, it would have been more logical to get a traditional shaped ukulele money wise.. happy strummings

So, I just placed an order, I am so excited

Went for the Koa, but stripped away the pickup and gigbag.

Ordering directly from the factory would set me back $ 700, but fortunately I found a european vendor who could get it for the equivalent of $ 530 though it is not in their usual catalog. Still not cheap, but way better

I wrote to a couple of stores to have the luck that one of them was about to place an order with the factory anyway.